My nephew showed me a new video game of his, Zelda: Breadth of the Wild. It's a massive action adventure game.
The relevance of this game to MY is as follows. Part of the game involves collecting objects, and once you collect enough you have to bring them to a Temple. Once there, there's a statue of a god and you have to interact with it. You have the option to pray to it, and by doing so you give it the objects and get some upgrade to your stamina.
Is there any halachic or hashkafic issue with virtual Avodah Zara? One couldn't do this in real life, so I'm wondering if doing it in a video game is just as bad or no. You're actively choosing to pray to what's classified as an idol. My understanding of Avodah Zara is the actions are prohibited even if one doesn't believe in what their doing. Here you're not doing any actions, but you're thinking about doing them. If I recall correctly from the gemarra in Kiddushin (30b?) The thoughts of Avodah Zara are just as bad as the action (although this might refer exclusively to belief).
This question assumes there's no inherent issue in playing video games in the first place
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